Short Fiction - Ray Bradbury (short story to read .TXT) 📗

that’d be something to sing about, by God.”

Brandon jerked.

Logan looked at him. “What’s eating you?”

Brandon laid his fingers on the dead Scientist’s skull.

“Maybe⁠—just maybe⁠—we have got the weapon,” he said.

His hand trembled.

The coroner pumps throbbed warmly under the table, while manipulating tendrils darted swiftly, effectively over the dead Scientist’s body. Brandon moved, too, like a machine. In a regular fury he had forced Logan to hurry the body down into the preparations room, inject adrenalin, thermal units, apply the blood pump and accomplish a thousand other demanding and instantaneous tasks.

“Now, out of the way, Logan. You’re more trouble than help!”

Logan stumbled back. “Okay, okay. Don’t get snotty. It won’t work. I keep telling you. All these years.”

Brandon could see nothing. Logan’s voice was muffled, far away. There was only the surge of pumps, the sweating heat of the little cubicle, and niche number 12 waiting to receive this body if he failed. Brandon swallowed, tightly. Niche number 12 waiting, cold, ready, waiting for a body to fill it. He’d have to fight to keep it empty.

He began to singsong words over and over as he injected stimulants into the body. He didn’t know where the words came from, from childhood, maybe, from his old religious memories:

“Lazarus come forth,” Brandon said softly, bending close, adjusting the manipulatory tendrils. “Lazarus, come forth.”

Logan snorted. “Lazarus! Will you can that!”

Brandon had to talk to himself. “Inside his brain he’s got that energy weapon that Earth can use to end the war. It’s been frozen in there three hundred years. If we can thaw it out⁠—”

“Who ever heard of reviving a body after that long?”

“He’s perfectly preserved. Perfectly frozen. Oh, God, this is Fate. I know it. I feel it. Came to find Richard and I found something bigger! Lazarus! Lazarus, come forth from the tomb!”

The machines thrummed louder, beating into his ears. Brandon listened, watched for just one pulse, just one beat, one word, one moment of life.

“Air for the lungs,” and Brandon attached oxygen cones over the fine nose and relaxed lips. “Pressure on the ribs.” Metal plates pressuring the rib case slowly out and in. “Circulation.” Brandon touched the control at the foot of the table and the whole table tilted back and forth in a whining teeter-tauter.

A report clipped through on the audio:

“Morgue Ship. Battle Unit 766 calling Morgue Ship. Off orbit of Pluto 234 cc, point zero-two, off 32, one by seven, follow up. Battle just terminated. Six Martian ships destroyed. One Earth ship blasted apart and bodies thrown into space. Please recover. 79 men. Bodies in orbit heading toward sun at 23456 an hour. Check.”

Logan flipped his cigarette away. “That’s us. We got work to do. Come on. Let that stiff cool. He’ll be here when we come back.”

“No!” Brandon fairly shouted it, eyes wild. “He’s more important than all those men out there. We can help them later. He can help us now!”

The table came to a halt, bringing absolute silence.

Brandon bent forward to press his ear against the warmed rib-casing.

“Wait.”

There it was. Unbelievably, there it was. A tiny pulse stirring like a termite down under, softly and sluggishly moving through the body, jabbing the heart and⁠—now! Brandon cried out. He was shaking all over. He was setting the machine in operation again, and talking and laughing and going crazy with it.

“He’s alive! He’s alive! Lazarus has come from the tomb! Lazarus reborn again! Notify Earth immediately!”

At the end of an hour, the pulse was timing normal, the temperature was lowering down from a fever, and Brandon moved about the preparations’ room watching every quiver of the body’s internal organs through the tubular-fluoroscope.

He exulted. This was having Richard alive again. It was compensation. You roared into space looking somewhere for your lost self-respect, your pride, looking for your son who is shooting on some soundless orbit into nothing, and now the biggest child of Fate is deposited in your arms to warm and bring to life. It was impossible. It was good. Brandon almost laughed. He almost forgot he had ever known fear of death. This was conquering it. This was like bringing Richard back to life, but even more. It meant things to earth and humanity; things about weapons and power and peace.

Logan interrupted Brandon’s exultant thinking by blowing smoke in his face. “You know something, Brandy? This is damn good! You done something, Mister. Yeah.”

“I thought I told you to notify Earth.”

“Ah, I been watching you. Like a mama hen and her chick. I been thinking, too. Yeah.” Logan shook ashes off his smoke. “Ever since you pulled in this prize fish, I been turning it over in my mind.”

“Go up to the radio room and call Earth. We’ve got to rush the Scientist to Moon Base immediately. We can talk later.”

There was that hard green shine to Logan’s narrow eyes again. He poked a finger at Brandon. “Here’s the way I get it. Do we get rewarded for finding this guy? Hell, no. It’s our routine work. We’re supposed to pick up bodies. Here we got a guy who’s the key to the whole damn war.”

Brandon’s lips hardly moved. “Call Earth.”

“Now, hold on a moment, Brandy. Let me finish this. I been thinking, maybe the Martians’d like to own him, too. Maybe they’d like to be around when he starts talking.”

Brandon made a fist. “You heard what I said.”

Logan put his hand behind him. “I just want to talk peaceable with you, Brandy. I don’t want trouble. But all we’ll get for finding this stiff is a kiss on the cheek and a medal on the chest. Hell!”

Brandon was going to hit him hard, before he saw the gun in Logan’s fingers, whipped out and pointing.

“Take a look at this, Brandy, and don’t lose your supper.”

In spite of himself, Brandon quailed. It was almost an involuntary action. His whole body plunged back, aching, pulling with it.

“Now, let’s march up to the radio room. I got a little calling to do. Get on with you. Hup!”

In the